


if the fates allow

by youaremarvelous



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Christmas, Domestic Fluff, Healing, M/M, Road Trips, Snow, a brave move, shiro bridal carries keith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 08:36:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17158763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youaremarvelous/pseuds/youaremarvelous
Summary: When Shiro hears Keith has never experienced snow, he decides the best time to solve it is now.“Where are we going?”“To find snow,” Shiro answers like it’s obvious. He tosses his phone into Keith’s lap. “Look it up.”“Look up snow?” Keith's voice cracks with a laugh. They don’t have coats or gloves or anything essential for weathering true winter temperatures. Keith doesn’t even have his shoes on. Shiro shifts the car into drive, anyway.





	if the fates allow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chinarai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chinarai/gifts).



> this is my gift for chinarai for the across the universe sheith secret santa. the prompt was "first time seeing snow." thank you for the fluffy prompt, I hope you enjoy it! <3

“What do you want for Christmas?” Shiro finally gathers the courage to ask a quiet night in mid-December. He and Keith are tangled together on the couch, worn out and dusty from a day spent resurrecting Keith’s old home from its desert tomb. It had been a burnt out husk when they tracked it down. A staircase to nowhere in a barren wasteland of yellow sand and bittersweet memories. It was a bigger project than they’d expected—more parts kindling than salvageable material—but neither of them could imagine settling down in the house the government had offered. Even with its paid off mortgage and shiny modern fixtures. It was a consolation prize to a contest they’d never meant to enter. A hollow replacement for all the things they’d lost.

 

Keith looks up from his book on sub-roof systems. His long legs are sprawled across the couch, his cold toes buried under Shiro’s thigh. The lamplight carves his mouth into a pensive frown. “I hadn’t thought about it.”

 

“So think about it,” Shiro presses. 

 

Keith looks down at his book again and flips a page. “I don’t need anything.”

 

Shiro tosses a couch cushion at his head. “I didn’t ask if you  _ need _ anything.” 

 

Keith’s book lands on the floor with a soft flap. He holds the cushion between his hands, bristling like an angry cat. “Well, what do  _ you _ want, asshole?”

 

“I asked you first.”

 

“I want you to stop asking annoying questions. Your turn.”

 

Shiro tickles the underside of Keith’s knee. “What are you so scared of?”

 

“Your eggnog farts, mostly.”

 

“Keith.”

 

Keith weaves his hands together. He pulls on his fingers one by one, popping them with a sickening crack. Shiro knows his answer before he gives it. “I already have everything I want.”

 

Shiro watches Keith snap his joints like Christmas crackers and he gets it. The things they want are intangible. Restored families, healed friends, a night of sleep uninterrupted by a surge of panic at the sound of a plane flying overhead. They can’t erase the past. It’s fused into their lives in indelible ways. Keith’s separation anxiety, Shiro’s inability to sleep through the night. They can’t rewrite it, but they can reinterpret it. The future is a door waiting to be opened. 

 

“Okay, so no gifts,” Shiro relents. “What if we start our own Christmas tradition?” 

 

“Shiro,” Keith groans. 

 

“We could chop down our own tree. Make a gingerbread house. Build a snowman?”

 

“Sure, in the desert.”

 

“It snows in the desert sometimes!” 

 

“Not since I’ve lived here.”

 

Shiro wraps a big hand around Keith’s ankle. “You’ve never seen snow?”

 

Keith frowns like he always does when he unwittingly reveals the obvious gaps in his upbringing. It’s been a while since Shiro’s seen it. The last time was on their first joint grocery trip when he had to explain what a pomegranate was. “I saw the imitation stuff once,” Keith says. “They blew it off the roof at the old hardware store for a winter promotion or—” he trails off with a shrug. “I think it was made out of soap bubbles or something.”

 

“I’m talking real snow,” Shiro says. “From the sky. Freeze your hands, melt into your socks, honest to god snow.”

 

Keith unearths his feet and pinches Shiro’s thigh with his toes. “Does it matter?”

 

It’s 9 pm. The sun dipped behind the mountains hours ago, tucking a thick blanket of darkness around the dunes. It doesn’t make sense for Shiro to scoop Keith up in his arms and carry him to the car for an impromptu trip, but that’s exactly what he does.

 

“Shiro?” Keith squawks. He clenches his nail in Shiro’s sweater, all stiff limbs and sharp angles. Shiro stuffs his feet into his shoes at the door and trods out to Keith’s Dad’s old Chevy. Keith could escape him if he wanted to. What he lacks in height he makes up for in strength. He doesn’t fight it when Shiro dumps him in the passenger seat and buckles his seatbelt over his lap, and that says enough.

 

Keith folds his arms over his chest. “Are you satisfied?”

 

Shiro smiles at him and cranks the engine. “Kind of.”

 

“Where are we going?”

 

“To find snow,” Shiro answers like it’s obvious. He tosses his phone into Keith’s lap. “Look it up.”

 

“Look up snow?” Keith's voice cracks with a laugh. They don’t have coats or gloves or anything essential for weathering true winter temperatures. Keith doesn’t even have his shoes on. Shiro shifts the car into drive, anyway.

 

Keith feigns interest in flipping through maps for a good ten minutes before dropping the phone in a cup holder and scanning through the radio. 

 

“Play something Christmas-y,” Shiro instructs. 

 

Keith settles on the classic rock station. He leans back in his seat and plants his bare feet on the dashboard. Shiro thinks about scolding him for it, but he reaches over the middle console and holds his hand, instead. 

 

The black horizon melts into the night, and the road goes with it. For a moment, Shiro forgets to breathe. He’s 400 million kilometers away, flanked by Galra battlecruisers, laser rifles singing the dark with sparkling capillaries. A star breaks loose and flashes across the sky in a streak of light. Keith turns Shiro’s hand over in his and traces his lifeline with quiet concentration. The careful touch of thin fingers across his wrist anchors him back to earth.  

 

“There,” Keith says, pointing at a snow-capped mountain to the east. Shiro flips on his turn signal and takes the next right. The climb is surprisingly easy. The Chevy stubbornly rumbles and burps up exhaust and Keith peers out the window, nose so close his breath fogs up the glass. Snow sprinkles the earth like powdered sugar on a pastry, piling denser the higher they get. Shiro rolls to a stop once they reach an overlook near the peak. 

 

“So uh…” Shiro waves a hand around. “This is it. What do you think?”

 

Keith swings his door open and leans out. The snow molds the terrain like marble in the dark—sanded and beveled—untouched in a way they could never hope to be. Keith stares like he’s memorizing it. “It’s nice,” he says, seconds before a snowball splatters against the side of his head. Keith loses his grip on the door and stumbles barefoot into the snow. Shiro’s laugh skips into the night like a coyote’s call and Keith squats and gathers snow between his trembling hands. “You’re going down,” he declares, pelting Shiro in the shoulder.  

 

They have to call it a truce in the end. Keith’s graveled laugh devolves into a cough, and Shiro gathers him up, convinced the cold will make him sick no matter how much Keith insists it’s an old wive’s tale. Keith takes the opportunity to stuff a handful of snow down Shiro’s pants. He laughs when Shiro curses and squirms, too determined to hang onto Keith to dig it out. They’re wet and cold, but it’s good. They can still be reckless, they can still have fun, and it doesn’t have to mean anything. The snow has excavated some forgotten part of them. It feels like hope. 

 

Shiro leaves the car idling, the radio turned up just loud enough to hear. Piano keys strum the night, a jazzy arrangement of  _ Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas _ . Keith climbs up on the hood, curling his toes over the warm aluminum. “You remember that winter Iverson got locked out of the dorms in his underwear?”

 

Shiro settles in next to him. The hood groans and bends under their combined weight. “I spend every day of my life trying to forget it.”

 

Keith leans back and laughs. His breath turns to vapor, floating up to the sky like a plume of chimney smoke. “I bet I’m colder now than he was then.”

 

Shiro wraps his prosthetic arm around Keith. It glows like stove coils, emanating a low heat. Keith tucks his dripping nose into his collar, his head under Shiro’s chin. “Better?” Shiro asks softly, squeezing Keith into his side. 

 

Keith wriggles his hands under Shiro’s shirt and doesn’t answer. Shiro flinches but doesn’t pull away. They watch the stars, twinkling like a strand of Christmas lights hung in the sky. “Maybe we can go back next Christmas,” Keith says, careful as an icicle clinging to an eave. “We could spend the day with my Mom and the others.” It’s an admission of a selfish desire. A plan for the future.

 

Shiro feels warm despite the weather. “Yeah,” he says, pressing his lips to the side of Keith’s head, the best gift he could’ve ever asked for. “That sounds nice.”

**Author's Note:**

> happy holidays, friends!
> 
> you can catch me on [tumblr](http://youremarvelous.tumblr.com/), [twitter](https://twitter.com/marvyarts), or [pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/youaremarvelous)


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